The revolution is coming, people — on four legs

For a while there, it appeared that the Occupy Wall Street people would be staging some sort of coup to take back control of the nation’s economy for the people, but that effort went away as soon as participants found something else to protest as the greatest slap against humanity the world has ever seen.

At another point in recent memory, there were whispers that the steam train known as the “Tea Party movement” was going to rise up against careless spending by the government and moral ambiguity by the populace as a whole, but that kind of lost some momentum when some overzealous members began to give the entire movement an air of general insanity and they got pushed back out of the nation’s collective consciousness.

We have heard and read over the years that people in this nation have become to feel disenfranchised by our two-party political system and that voters would start electing independent minds without specific ties to special interest groups, but each national election comes and goes with candidates from “third parties” receiving less votes than they have family members.

And lately, once again, there has been talk about militia groups forming to overthrow the government, or at least establish a circumstance where people could be permitted to live their lives without interference from the powers-that-be, but this has been talked about before on many occasions, and the general population basically listens to what they have to say, acknowledges that there’s something to their complaints and turns its attention back to Justin Bieber or NFL training camps.

So, yeah, forgive me if I have started to look at all these situations with tired eyes and an extended yawn.

That being said, I’m noticing another revolution that appears to be taking hold across the globe, and I’m not sure if this one will just go away like so many others before it.

Of course, I’m talking about the rising of the animals.

Go ahead and scoff. Many of you did when I told you about the exploits of Leviathan, one of the craftiest individuals I have ever come across, and the original crafter of this plan of animal domination, in my opinion.

For those unaware, Leviathan was an enormous raccoon that lived behind our offices and would constantly bully and ridicule me as I made my way through the parking lot. Oh, people laughed at the crazy bald guy when I told them about my theories, but I would also see co-workers come through the office door with fear in their eyes when they would eventually make their first contact with the beast.

“You weren’t kidding,” they would say. “That thing is huge.”

“And smart,” I would reply. “He’s like a furry evil genius.”

Alas, like so many revolution leaders before him, a bad storm took Leviathan’s life before he could accomplish what he set out to do to the world, and my fears of an animal uprising were quashed.

At least momentarily.

Perhaps Leviathan achieved martyrdom with his untimely demise. For several weeks now, people have been telling me about more raccoon sightings around the office — and the topic of conversation has not been the size, as it was with Leviathan. It’s been about sheer numbers. Indeed, I finally witnessed this raccoon uprising for myself, and nearly had to ask for an oxygen tank as I saw four of them walking together near the canal behind our office.

And, people, the raccoons are not alone.

The Associated Press reported on an 80-pound domestic pig that had been terrorizing people along a walking trail in Maine. AP cited a story in The Morning Sentinel stating that the runaway pig scared two children walking the trail, chased a high school student and ultimately attacked a woman during its three months of freedom...

Why do I picture our graphic artist Tom Maglio running from a pig some day? It just seems like such a natural thing that’s bound to happen one day, and I now have to go run and get the GoPro camera set up to follow Tom...

But I digress.

This is not an uprising contained to our fruited plains, by the way.

The Associated Press also ran a story this week on an infestation of rats in the elegant garden at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The problem has become so rampant, in fact, that sanitation workers and exterminators launched an all-out offensive on the vermin in May, pouring poison down rat holes and taking the fight to the critters where they live.

“A decision was made to do a shock operation,” said Jean Claude Ndzana Ekani, an employee at the Louvre.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but the French did not win this battle. The rats continue to take up the animal-uprising cause and stake their claim to the Louvre.